Hypnosis and the Conflicting Conscious and Subconscious Mind

Guess what? If the conscious and subconscious mind were in complete agreement, you'd achieve all your goals. There would be no need for psychotherapy, counselors, hypnosis consultants, psychiatrists, social workers... The reality is that we end up accepting and sometimes creating self limiting suggestions. Suggestions about what we do and don't deserve, what we can and can't do, how we fit in and don't fit in with others, what emotions we should have and which we shouldn't. And even though our conscious mind may believe that we deserve everything, can do anything we desire, and that we are as good as any other human being, our subconscious may be stuck with beliefs to the contrary.

They say we only use about 11% of our brain power. From my experience, I believe we actually may use 100%. The only problem is that 89% of it is in direct conflict resulting in 11% utilization.

For example, Jane came to me complaining of depression. In our first session when asked about her relationship with her parents she told me how close she was with her mother and how hateful her father was. In fact she blamed her dad for her mother's death. I then asked where her dad was and she told me that she had him move in with her, her husband and two
children since her mother had passed. I asked her how she now feels about her dad now and she in half a statement/half a question, "you're supposed to love your dad, aren't you?"

Within Jane we find two opposing beliefs about her father:
1. Her father was hateful, drove her mother crazy, and
led to her death.
2. She's supposed to love her father.
The inability to resolve these beliefs led to her depression.

Opposing conflicting beliefs don't always contribute to this severe of a problem--they can simply stand in the way of success, contribute to shyness, discord in relationships...

If you ever got upset with yourself because for some reason you didn't live up to your expectations, you may have an idea as to what this is about. You say, "why did I react that way, I knew better!" This is because even though you consciously know how you want to react in a situation, your subconscious mind causes you to react differently. Not knowing this, you get upset with yourself saying, "Why am I so stupid? I knew better than to do that!"

Dr. Joyce Brothers explained this best in noting that the subconscious mind lags the conscious mind. The goal is to bring the unconscious portion of the mind up-to-date to agree with the conscious understanding. It's like when I first brought a cuckoo clock home. When it cuckooed my subconscious awakened me. My conscious knew it was only a clock and I went back to sleep. This happened a few more times until the message from my conscious mind finally got through to the subconscious. When that happened, my subconscious stopped awaking me.

Any hypnotist or any cd program using hypnosis that is successful effectively aids the client or user in identifying the conflicts between the conscious and subconscious mind. And then creatively supports the client or user to resolve them. Specific hypnotic suggestions are used to bring the subconscious mind up-to-date to agree with the new conscious understanding.

When the conscious and subconscious mind are in synch, one can shed weight, stop smoking, overcome fears, failure mechanisms, anxiety panic attack, dealing with rejection...

Richard Kuhns B.S. Ch. E., NGH certified is a prominent stress management hypnosis consultant for personal change. He is the author behind the best selling hypnosis cds at http://www.DStressDoc.com and http://www.PanicBusters.com (anxiety attack).